Dam Breached in Illinois Flooding

Hundreds of people in a southern Illinois town were ordered to evacuate Tuesday as water rolled over the top of a dam, just one perilous result of severe weather that raged through Midwest overnight with relentless rain and tornadoes and hit the Chicago area especially hard. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power, and even weather forecasters had to briefly scramble for safety, the AP reports. A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell on a home Monday night

• Water overtopped a dam near Nashville, Illinois, sending first responders out to ensure everyone got out safely. There were no reports of injuries in the community of 3,000, southeast of St. Louis, but a woman reported water up to her waist in her home, said Alex Haglund, a spokesperson for the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.
• Officials had earlier said about 300 people were in the evacuation zone near the city reservoir. The rest of Nashville was not in imminent danger from the dam failure, but flash flooding on roads created worries about water rescues. Haglund said a portion of the dam failed early Tuesday, but it wasn't clear if it was a break or an overtopping. A "secondary failure" happened later in the morning when the dam was overtopped.

• The National Weather Service said 5-7 inches of rain fell over an eight-hour period. Additional heavy rain was in the forecast. The service warned of potential "life-threatening flash flooding." An 11-mile stretch of Interstate 64 in the Nashville area was closed because of flooding.
• As the storms swept through the Chicago area late Monday, employees at a suburban National Weather Service office had to pass coverage duties to a northern Michigan post for five minutes when storms swept through. The agency reported wind speeds in the region as high as 75 mph.
• "We did have an area of rotation," meteorologist Zachary Yack said, referring to extreme rotating wall clouds. "And it kind of developed right near our office here in Romeoville, Illinois ... We went and took cover. We have a storm shelter here."

(More severe weather stories.)